I’m a very frequent regular at my local zoo, Marwell Wildlife, and have trekked the zoo in all kinds of weather, including the heavy snowfall of 2010 when the zoo was almost to myself. This provided the great opportunity to photograph the snow leopards in their element, and the elderly female Yasmin proved more than obliging as the above picture shows. If you wanted a dictionary description of beauty, then this animal would undoubtedly take both the biscuit and tin; yet, like most natural beauties, snow leopards are tragically another species we’ve sat on the edge of a knife.